Cozumel...No Names

Last night we did groove in the crystal room, which is a lounge with a dance floor in the back of the ship. After we did the dance on the stage, we dispersed into the audience and posed among the people like statues. We aren’t allowed to talk to them, or smile, so it was a little difficult to keep a straight face as people are coming up and posing with you for pictures. I sat down in a both next to a couple and just stared at them, and luckily the big white sunglasses I was wearing allowed me to look just above their heads so I didn’t have to see them laugh at my black short bobbed wig and my tight white dress with holes in the hips. It was really fun to interact with the guests like that, and after teaching a couple dance classes to them with Diego, it was funny when they tried to figure out which one was me.

Diego and I have taught two dance classes so far on this cruise, one two days ago and one this morning. We’ve taught the waltz and the cha-cha. The guests on this ship average to an age of about 60, so it is absolutely adorable to teach them all in class. Most of the older couples know more about the dances then we do, but the class always picks my day up a little, even more so when they say hello to me in the buffet line or after my shows. Most of them want to know my story; where I come from, how long I’ve trained, and so on. Yesterday I chatted with a couple who lived in Marlboro, Ma, so they knew exactly where I have been and where I live.

We also had a boat drill for the crew this morning around noon, which included the announcement and the alarm letting us know that we needed to report to the correct life raft stations. Out on the deck, we stood in our life vests in groups around the outside of the ship for about 15 minutes while they called our numbers for attendance check.

After boat drill and a quick safety training session on how the life rafts open up and get lowered, we changed into our bathing suits and ran as fast as we could off the ship and onto the sandy beach of Cozumel. There is a bar right off the deck called The No Name Bar, and it is a designated spot for crewmembers of ships that dock there. The drinks and items on the menu are named after cruise ship positions, for example; the vegetarian section is called ‘the dancers’, with a garden salad called ‘the dance captain’. We spent a lovely 4 hours or so swimming and drinking frozen rum drinks in the pool with a swim up bar, or out in the ocean on the raft loving the sun and the heat.

Tonight we have a run through of ‘Liverpool Knights’ and then we do Sizzle on the pool deck at 9:15 before we leave Cozumel at 10pm. The small amount of time we spent off the ship today helped me solidify the reasons why I am doing this. I wasn’t having doubts about the job, because the opportunity to dance is really all I ever need, but being able to enjoy Mexico for a little bit was wonderful and we will be doing just that on the beaches of Greece and Croatia about a month. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is why I am dancing on the Celebrity Century.